Parental consent needed for youngsters to use social media in EU?

Kirsty Styles writes: “Parents could soon be made to approve their teenagers’ use of social media and chat apps if a last-minute change to data protection laws makes the cut in final discussions starting in the EU tomorrow. The law would make it illegal for companies to handle data from anyone aged 15 or under without parental consent, effectively stopping young people from using their favorite services”.

This was bound to happen for a long time, either on EU level or on individual member states’ level. I have been trying for over eight years to get an infrastructure in place that would enable this in the least painful way possible, but the Dutch authorities didn’t go for it. So now we might get legislation without an infrastructure – which means another piece of symbolic legislation that will exist on paper only. Why bother?